USA airstrike kills 100 Islamists in Somalia

22 November 2017

The US military said it killed more than 100 Islamist militants in Somalia on Tuesday when it launched an air strike against al Shabaab, an al Qaeda-linked insurgent group that wants to topple the United Nations backed government.

The raid on the camp 125 miles northwest of Mogadishu, the capital, was co-ordinated with Somalia's central government, the Pentagon said.

Al-Shabaab has pledged allegiance to al-Qaeda and is dedicated to providing safe haven for terrorist attacks throughout the world. The group is responsible for one of the largest suicide truck bombings in history, which killed more than 300 civilians in October.

A USA defense official said that the strike on an al-Shabaab training camp was carried out by a manned aircraft, CNN reported. The official, who was not authorized to speak to reporters on the record and discussed the matter on condition of anonymity, said senior al-Shabab commanders were among the dead.

The U.S. military has roughly 500 troops in Somalia, double the number of forces from a year ago. In March 2016, a USA airstrike killed more than 150 al-Shabab fighters in Somalia. "It is just ... propaganda", he told Reuters in Somalia. The US pulled non-essential diplomatic staff out of Mogadishu this month after a threat against them.

Earlier this month, the US military also carried out its first strikes against Islamic State militants in Somalia and said it killed "several terrorists".

The U.S. military this week also conducted two airstrikes in Libya against ISIS militants, according to a second Africom statement released Tuesday.